 2017 conference. This is our second time here for six degrees of association. Most of you know we're the only online TV show that's dedicated to the pursuit of association success. I'm your host Sarah Gonzalez from Redback Conferencing and once again I'm joined by my co-host over here Andrew McCallum from the Association of Corporate Council Australia. We're back. Thank you. Good. And a little surprise to be invited back to be honest after last year. Minus one as you can tell again with Rob, he's been removed from there but that's okay because we're doing quite well. We've got two other amazing people by our side today. Rob who? Yeah exactly. So first of all I just like to say thank you everyone for joining and for those of you watching online. I'd also like to welcome our two very special guests for today. So most of you probably know Graeme Kat, the CEO of the Australian Veterinary Association and President of Aussie. How are you today? Very good. Thanks for joining. And secondly we've got Sam, wait a minute, Ref Shorgie. Nailed it. Good. From Mathe. Thank you for joining us as well. Thanks for having us. So firstly welcome gentlemen. Great to have you here. We're going to throw all sorts of questions to you both and we're going to discuss what you guys do, how you were impacted in the sector and what we can learn from you. But first of all we're going to go to our regular segment which is thumbs up, thumbs down. So I will be the gentleman and I will hand it over to you to start. Thank you. There's a tremendous irony in this first thumbs up on my behalf today because 12 months ago in Canberra I copped a bit of flak for giving a thumbs down to Aussie. I'm still getting emails from them. That's all great. I'm just sending you emails from different email addresses. But I'm really excited to do the 180 today and do a thumbs up to Aussie for their decision to appoint Tony Brealy as the new CEO. I think there's a tremendous, it's something all organisations should aspire to to be able to promote leadership from within. So fantastic choice. I'm sure I speak for a lot of people here that have dealt with Tony over a number of years that say she'll do a fantastic job. And thumbs up to the Aussie board for making that appointment. Thumbs down. That was great. Thumbs down. So all is forgiven, Graham. Is that right? Thumbs down. Can you believe this? I read this recently. The Australian charities are not for not for profits commission has just had to deregister 550 Australian charities this year alone for failing to meet their reporting requirements. It's hard to believe but you know unfortunately it reflects on the whole NFP sector and you know running a business you have certain obligations. Running a charity you have significant obligations and part of being a charity is meeting those obligations. So unfortunately 550 is an extraordinary amount of charities that have had to be deregistered for failing to meet their basic operating obligations. What do you got Sarah? Oh my turn already. That was the quickest you've ever been so thanks for that. Thumbs up and this ties into a lot of yesterday I was part of the learning lab with Angie from Up to Fire and we discussed the redback report which we've recently released and it all comes down to the use of video within education for the association sector. Now one of the things that we've seen is the use of video for CPD related events and we've actually been working with the Institute of Public Accountants and they've actually come along and they've invested much more into their digital program. So they've really gotten away from delivering the traditional education model when it comes to online presenting which is just having a PowerPoint there and talking to people and talking at members in terms of educating them and they're actually now using high quality video they're engaging with their presenters and it's much more compelling so they've gone out there they've listened to what their members want and they're now delivering education that's much more valuable than just a simple PowerPoint presentation. So big thumbs up to them we've been working with them recently and it's working as well and it's you know they understand it's more about just doing stuff and talking at people online it's much more about engaging people and getting them involved but also delivering high quality content as well so big thumbs up to them. Thumbs down and I actually forgot to bring it with me but a few weeks ago through AusA I actually read the recent survey by ASI so Advanced Solutions International and one of the things that came out of this and if you've got a chance head over to their booth and take a look at the survey so they went out and they surveyed over 380 membership-based organizations and one of the big things I actually found in the survey came down to measuring engagement and having systems in place and it just seems like it doesn't seem like a huge focus for many membership organizations out there so from the survey and this is just taken a short snippet of it 28% of those surveyed actually had membership engagement plans in place however the top two goals for the respondents were to increase member retention and member engagement so surely there's a correlation there we want to achieve this but we're not doing this and to me that just seemed a little bit all over the place yeah and then on top of this the survey also showed that 60% of associations still use separate and multiple systems so surely that makes their top two challenges even more unachievable if they've got systems all over the place and they're not talking to each other so my thumbs down is more of you know something we can aspire to I guess so you know we've got these challenges out there and we know what we need to do so maybe let's just start doing them that's mine it's a good thing mine were short too yeah exactly any thoughts on that gentleman before we get on to you guys is this working I think you need to turn it on I thought it was my mic it's not working yep um yes yeah we've uh at the ABA at the moment going digital is our big focus and a large part of that is driven by it's sort of in that sense of being consciously incompetent so the more you start to want to find out what your challenges are the more you start to mine your data the more you start to realize that having a CRM and an event system and a learning module system and all the things that don't talk to each other and you know I guess from a CEO perspective you're after fast answers as well being able to tap into data and asking someone can you tell me x and then finding out that x will take three staff five days to sit down and manually pull out as they go across multiple systems to be flawed anyway it's very difficult so yeah we're we're investing very heavily in digital at the moment and it's really all about getting those systems back to a point where they're not heavily customized and we can actually go in and to me it's asking questions like that tell me how engaged my members are tell me what my members buy how much they spend simple questions about real life behavior not about just receiving reports and then trying to figure them out so it's a big thing and I think it's a big thing for the future if they're actually going to grow and prosper I think one of the uh one of the challenges there as well is that the the concept of taking things digital is is really sexy and everyone thinks oh we've got to go into the digital age everything's got to be tech based or through one system but sometimes it's actually better to stop and consider what the objectives are what your actual challenges are and work through which systems are going to be able to help you achieve that I've learnt the hard way don't get taken by the good salesman who makes you think that their system is going to do everything because it never will and so take the time to look at what's out there and and pick what's right for you before you go down that track of bringing in a whole lot of new systems because you can actually take your whole lot more time we've been 18 months in scoping yeah so in order to choose a vendor so we've learnt we've learnt the hard way and I think that's our lesson is yeah understand what you need understand what you try to do and before you even go and choose a vendor or go purchase or go through all that process of discovery and diligence so you're making wise choices based on what you need sounds like you're far smarter than I am Graeme give me a vast use should we put you guys together in the middle and you can battle it out um so let's start with you and let's really get into this discussion we really want to have a chat with both of you we feel like you've got a lot to add to today's episode but first off Sam can you tell us a little bit where are you there you are you're right a little bit about Beteer and what you guys do and your mission to change the world I guess yeah definitely thanks yeah it's really exciting to be to be asked to to talk on the show I guess I'm coming here from a bit of a different perspective Beteer is not an association we call ourselves a four-purpose organization which I see is just a positive way to say you're a non-for-profit I'd much prefer to focus on what we do do not what we don't do but we run mental health programs for young people so taking a preventative educational approach to try and get more young people talking about mental health and then being empowered to be able to get support when they need it so the way that we do that is that we train young people who have a lived experience with mental health so a story that they would like to share we train them to be able to share that in a safe and effective way and then we take them back into schools and universities to show other young people that it's okay to not be okay that there is support out there and that going and putting your hand up and being vulnerable and saying I do need support I do need help is actually something that should be viewed as a strength and not a weakness and something that we should encourage and I guess a lot of the times many of us are fortunate enough to be working in areas where we're so passionate about something and we're really close to a cause how did you actually get involved in Beteer? Yes so I was lucky enough to know the founder of Beteer Sebastian Robinson who started up the organization based off the back of his own lived experience his own battles with depression and when he was getting it started I was working at another non-for-profit working with young people in schools and universities so there was a fair bit of crossover in the way in which we did things. He invited me along to his first training session and I was surrounded by 10 young people who shared stories that absolutely blew me away things about depression about anxiety eating disorders bipolar things that I just had no idea were going on all around me and I felt that I wanted to do as much as I could from that point to try and get those stories and create that environment for as many other people as possible. So I managed to talk my way onto the board as a director which was about three and a half years ago and then when Sebastian the founder was getting ready to move on he asked me if I'd like to take on or take over the growth of his baby and I for some reason said yes I've been CEO for a bit over two years. Great so I mean talking a bit about what the good work that Beteer does I'm interested to know a bit more about the funding model for the organization. Yes so at the very beginning we made a conscious decision not to go for government funding because we were a new sort of innovative unique way to approach the issue. We didn't want to be tied down to the government's way of doing things or I guess held held to one side of government or another and then what I've seen a lot happen with non-for-profits especially trying to do great things with young people is that if they're government funded they go in and promise the world and then the next year they're not there and young people actually suffer in the end. So still to date five and a half years later we haven't had any government funding so what we do is spread that across a range of different funding sources so one of which is a fee for service model so schools and universities actually pay a contribution for us to go and deliver the program for their students and then we also have corporate partners usually through the foundations within different corporates who fund the programs philanthropic foundations as well and then there's a whole range of fundraising events that bring in another source of revenue for us as well so it's quite diverse and spread across pretty evenly across those revenue streams. So on that last bit there when you actually go out and you speak to corporates because we've spoken a few episodes in the past about sponsorship and how to get sponsorship and how a lot of the times a lot of associations actually undersell themselves when they are going to actually fund what they're doing so when you go out and you sit there you bring a lot of passion to the issue I can tell what do you actually how do you approach it do you have a model or how do you recommend other organizations go out there when it comes to sponsorship and gaining that from the corporate sector? Yeah look it's it's a really good question and I think something that every time you go through that process or that conversation you learn something and get better at it I don't think from my perspective there's a right or a wrong way to do it you've got to find I guess integrity in the way that works best for you. One great line that an old CEO of mine used to say is in the the non-for-profit sector you've got to take a approach using a language of opportunity not obligation what we have whether it's in an association or within a for-purpose or a non-for-profit is a great opportunity to connect whether it's corporate whether it's community whether it's associations with something that really matters and can really make a difference and you've got to work out how to best sell that because that is an amazing opportunity a lot of corporates don't have so I think in order to do that what you really need to find are corporates and organizations that values are aligned with yours as an organization for us for example if an organization really doesn't care about well-being or mental health it's going to be pretty hard for us to find a connect point with them so we do a lot of research before we even make a phone call as to where their values are where what their strategic plan looks like whether mental health and well-being is a part of what they're trying to achieve as an organization and then if that aligns you can get sort of to the front door and then from there it's working out where you can really add value to what they're trying to achieve as an organization whether it's for us providing mental health or preventive educational programs for their staff whether it's giving them access to the audience or the market that we can attract whether they're trying to I guess market or advertise to young people that might be another point of value for them whether it's trying to become closer connected to the community or have an opportunity to provide an open a provide events or open their doors up to the broader community you've really got to look at that reciprocal nature of a partnership and look at what's in it for them and how you can add value to what they're trying to achieve I like that sense you're selling opportunity it sounds really good but bringing you into the conversation Graham one thing we spoke about you're here one thing Sarah and I did speak about a few weeks ago was that concept of underselling underselling yourselves to corporates so you know do you think as a sector the associations or the not-for-profit sector does undervalue or undersell themselves when they're going to corporates I'm not quite sure I'm not sure whether undersell is is the right word I think we it's interesting listen to Sam talk because although the community he refers to is quite different to the community which is our profession our industry in the veterinary sector a lot of the same principles to apply I think we kind of I think we kind of undersell and oversell at the same time I think our corporate support probably falls into two categories I think one's one's quite transactional there are people limited budget they want to come to your event and they've got clear overview I need to money bleeds I need I need narrow-eyedness investment and our task with those people is to deliver the maximum in line with the business outcomes that they have achieved but then like Sam I think there's there's another area and I would say the same thing applies for us where if we focus on the transactional that's where we undersell because exactly what you're saying we don't investigate the opportunities that we have with the company so the opportunities to be aligned to understand their business a little bit better to think about if we knew a little bit more about what each other's trying to achieve could we do something new and different Oliver Envy is listening to your story because you know I think about something that's a few years old it's innovative that's trying to create a new funding model the ABA is pushing 100 so it's our 100th birthday in 1921 and so you know we're obviously about evolution rather than innovation we're trying to push the boundaries but to do it very slowly but I think it's not it's not so much that we undervalue I think it's perhaps that we don't understand that that bigger market and have those conversations about what business are you really in what are you trying to achieve how do you align with us and how can we do something a little bit different that doesn't fall into our model and that's you know it's tough because we're busy people you're probably your CEO a sponsorship manager whatever your role is whatever your organization is we've only got limited time so how do you do that how do you find the time to actually invest in in relationships but you know I guess the thing I'm learning as I go on is what's increasingly becoming redundant is the transactional nature of these relationships it's getting old it's getting tired it's the exploring the relationship and saying okay how do we how do we do something together and I would say most of our most of our corporate supporters would be at the bigger end would be waiting for that to happen because they've been in these models as well for the last 10 years the last 20 years last 30 years you know their world's changing they're merging they're amalgamating they've got corporate masters in the US or Europe and so bringing them opportunity and having that conversation together and say how do we do it I think that's how we get the value proposition from us back on the table that's been a long complicated answer to a short I expect nothing less I do agree you know even coming from the corporate side of things to your point Sam when you are talking about online values for us as corporates we're always looking you know social responsibility is huge but we want to align ourselves with an organization that does reflect the same values and not just want to go into sponsorship for the sake of sponsorship or to be seen to you know the people who we need to be seen to to be just you know sponsoring something for the sake of it so I think it's really important to have those values and is that what you look for when you seek out corporates yeah we do you finally enough listening to Sam as well look as you were talking then I was thinking you can't integrity you can't buy it and people sniff out authenticity is becoming more and more what people are looking for what consumers looking for what our members are looking for and you can sniff it a mile away you can't buy integrity you can't buy alignment it's got to be genuine you can work towards it you can set an aspiration as a corporate and say this is where we want to be we believe this is important we want to partner with someone like Sam and order to get ourselves there and there's authenticity in that but you know having integrity so for us it's probably very similar thing you know our members look at the companies in their sector that are genuinely helping them they're genuinely driving innovation or genuinely contributing to sector growth or helping their business and they know who those companies are so we look we look for very similar things which is are they aligned with their values but that integrity question is still the same thing because a big partnership with lots of money flowing in from someone who's on the nose when it comes to our members and industry generally doesn't really do anybody any favours and again it reeks of inauthenticity inauthenticity is that a word yeah and yeah it doesn't do anything long-term relationships again rather than transactional ones depend on that relationship persevering beyond a couple of years and that's not going to happen unless that company's either in your space with a good reputation or actively authentically working to attain that yeah so that's a big thing all right so let's see if you walk the walk then who are your top three corporate sponsors uh the top three all of our corporate sponsors are in the top three ah good answer there's no favourite children uh i'll give you a couple of different angles because i think the relationships between them are quite different so um Macquarie Bank through the Macquarie Group Foundation have been a supporter of Batir since the very beginning and and speaking of sort of those long-term relationships i think it's a perfect example um and i couldn't help to think as we were talking you know it's it's kind of like chatting up someone at a bar and if if you you want to one night stand then you're probably just trying to sell them with the glitz and glam and not not think about what really matters to you whereas if you want to create a long-term partnership maybe date for a couple of months or you know take it to the next level um you actually need to let them talk to you and find out what really matters to them um and that's kind of what we've done with Macquarie Bank over the last four or five years where we've listened to to where their strategic direction is for the foundation how we fit into there and then developed our partnership to align with that um and so that's been a longer term one so Macquarie Bank um a very different organization that's recently come on board about a year ago is a group called Diona who are a big construction company um so one that you you probably wouldn't recognize as a really close alignment between um a youth mental health organization and a big construction company um that has cranes and and work sites all over all over the country um but they realize that mental health was a big issue within their industry um and uh funnily enough they also have a lot of Irish people working for them so the way that that relationships work is that they've actually connected us with the Irish community who run a bunch of different fundraisers and events throughout the year that we now get some of the proceeds for and so we're building the relationship with the corporate partner through their workforce and the the broader community to help them be able to help their their their staff so Diona's um another another big partner of us and then a very different one again is a group called Good Shift who are essentially a organization that operate in a similar way to association in which they bring in new startups that are looking to operate in the social purpose space and help to grow and develop them um but they support us off the side of that and we sort of help to support some of the younger organizations that are coming up as well so Good Shift's the third I like the way you're welded some dating advice into that answer actually Sam good job listen to them let them to How's your um dating game going with your sponsors? I don't swipe right when any of our sponsors present I actually I like Sam's methodology so I'm going to use it so rather than look I'll tell you three that probably are on the top list for us and they come from quite different places again so one of our biggest corporate partners is a pet nutrition company but their business model globally is entrenched on working through associations to with with the veterinary associations around the world so they invest heavily and again their ethos is we invest in the profession not we give money to organizations to access market they invest very heavily in new graduate programs in focusing on people transactions a bit of a link with some Sam stuff there in developing leadership so again they kind of walk the talk when it comes to saying we put money not into transactional relationships we put money into veterinary science we put money into the profession itself and the development of leaders within the profession and they would be our number one supporter and that would be the case probably with a lot of our sister associations around the world so that investment is global it's not just Australia the second one was interesting probably our number two supporter as a wholesaler and they are a success story it was started by Group of Vets it ran and grew very successfully for a number of years and it was ultimately brought out by Henry Shine so it's now Shine Animal Health Australia but their CEO has been there probably pushing 20 years their chairman is still the veterinarian and an old one and so their investment again is very much and I won't go into the detail but obviously there's risk in that for us because they have corporate masters they're in a different model they're in their own bi-publicly listed company but again they invest in education so they're our education partner and that's their focus is we want to invest we want to align ourselves with the education of the profession and so their investment goes into education activity and that's how they want to see us and the third is probably good insurance who are here who might many of you know and again that's a very different relationship because it's built around the provision of a member benefit which is indemnity insurance business insurance for veterinarians but it's built around the relationship which is all about risk management so it's built around actually working together to reduce and mitigate risk in the sector and obviously that's very significant if you're an insurer so again a lot of the things that we do together aren't just straight out access to market they're actually about trying to affect change within the profession and the sector and that's mutually beneficial so three quite different probably at the bigger end of our of our spectrum but three again three quite different companies with three quite different goals and very long-term partnerships I've been with the ABA almost 10 years and they were there before I was here and I hope they'll be there for many years to come so I guess it's moving it to the association sector Graham because you are here you mentioned ABA nearly up to 100 years how many what would the membership be of ABA today we have about six and a half thousand vetry members we have three thousand student members and we are growing probably quite recently like a lot of other associations like us we've probably had to grapple with the question of are we here for the vet or are we here for the vet and the broader industry they work in and how do we get their balance right and so probably really this year we're increasingly starting to grow our membership of people who are vets but play critical roles in industry managers and we're probably pushing 200 of those members as well now so getting up to around 10,000 is a Bondi vet a member Chris is a member oh always want to ask you that so he's really a vet yeah and from those thinking of those the actual veterinary people that have a vet science background what do you sort of measure what's are they in it for the long haul are they your members that are there for the length of their career yeah look I think it's changing I think there's a lot going on in our in our profession in our industry I'm not a vet I should say for those who don't know me when I say our profession but I think in our organization we talk about our profession we're part of it and it's that's the ethos in the culture that we have yeah look I think traditionally when you're a vet you're a vet you went to vet school you graduated you never left that profession it was a great place to be you went and worked with someone for a while you probably got into partnership or ownership you probably got to stake in the business or own the business you owned it and retired and disappeared I think fewer people are in it for the long haul and I think that membership journey has really changed quite a lot where a lot of people are never going to own a business and they don't aspire to we have I would say currently we probably have probably got a thousand vets that would be employed by corporations by listed or large companies and four years ago that number probably was a hundred a lot of people that you know they're employees they're never going down that journey of owning the practice but within those models there's jobs that didn't exist four years ago either there's management roles there's clinical roles there's a whole range of things you can do that weren't there so I think that that whole journey for the profession and that whole that whole notion of kind of a student graduate journeyman business owner retired I has really has really changed and one of the things to go with it is probably people aren't necessarily in the long haul and our challenge is how do we realign our membership a lot of the thinking about the membership journey funnily enough is putting that on a whiteboard student graduate employee business owner retired and aligning membership products and services and benefits with that journey and as the journey changes and and is different that's our challenge at the moment is to go what's the new journey what does it look like and it's not linear anymore it's kind of all over the place with people moving in and out of different places and off in different directions so so how do we shape our membership our value proposition how do we make sure the products and services we offer there's something for everybody and I think to be frank one of our great challenges and other professions would have the same is in moving to the new way of working where so many people are employees and are probably happily going to be employees for a very long time how do we make ourselves relevant to them and not an anachronism that is still based around the practice owner and the partner and that kind of small business model how important obviously there's a lot of people out there as well who may have members and it's very similar to you because there are different stages in their career so you have to develop your service offering to meet that how much of a priority should that be within an association do you think it depends if you want to still be around in five or ten years to be honest um do you think people do it well enough look I my observation is I think it's really hard to shape and so I would look at for example the people who come through our door to pitch member benefits to us they're all pitched to the business it's about 100 percent of them are actually going down that same notion that we want to give you a membership benefit it's really for an employee it's almost never for an employee working for a big company and it's off it's always again back into the practice because the vendors out there and the partners out there still seem to have this notion that that's the vet it's the practice and it's it's like a romantic notion I guess we don't want to think that there's big listed companies employing a thousand vets we want them all to be the bondo vet I know the bondo vet I know the practice so it's a bit of a even with the best intentions you know I'm a great believer in this framework of you know are you are you unconsciously incompetent are you consciously incompetent and trying to meet yourself up through there even with the best intentions it's a struggle to try and address it because we are now actively going well how we know what we need to do we need to become relevant to a group of employees who work for big companies we need to be relevant to our traditional base which is the independent practice we need to disenfranchise neither and how do we do that how do we go to the thing but my observation would be there's not a lot of partners out there that are making that happen my my own view is I think this is you've got to be conscious of it to your question if you're not you're not going to survive if you are a traditional profession like ours because they're all changing the world is changing and I think the answer probably lies in part of our sort of strategic ethos of our membership is getting out of the products and services game so now our model again I think is pretty okay let's face it you know I'll charge you a big fee to be a member and then the benefit of being member is I can charge you more fees to come and buy things from me it's a bizarre model that's why I'm envious of Sam you know it's great I love you new innovative ways of doing things um we've got to get out of that and I think part of our answer is we're investing in mentoring and hopefully you've been to some of their presentations on mentoring and talk to the art of mentoring people but more conceptually so as an association I think our role is to be a mentor it's not to be a product and service provider it's to help you the professional figure out where you want to go and how you get there and I think you know for that for us probably reinventing ourselves to go that's our role um makes us relevant to everybody no matter where you work no matter what you're trying to get to no matter how many times you move is to be a trusted partner to help you on that journey so um we're a long way off being there but strategically I think that's probably the right move and the right move for some other associations as well Sam any thoughts about introducing a membership model into a cake membership model that's yeah I'll just piggyback off what's worked for the last 100 years and do the same but um look I think the the best answer this is sort of we have we have thought about it um there are a range of different options we we build very strong relationships with our volunteers through universities and schools and I think there is an opportunity there to develop those people into whether it's a really engaged alumni group or a step into a membership group um I think that there's a lot of opportunity there how it works best what the uh what what the best model is um I'm not really sure but I think definitely um for organizations like us that build such an engaged group of whether it's volunteers whether it's um supporters working out how to develop that connection and and offer them more and have them more involved in the future is is a really good opportunity so just working out how to do it's the big challenge for those of us at the other end I think looking at looking at organizations like SAMS looking at the get ups of the world looking at the people that that harness harness people to achieve goals and for purpose and for cause and achieve something move on I think we've actually got a lot to learn from how you how you develop new new models look like that because I think as I said I think the old ones are increasingly anachronistic service that much thank you watching you so Graham one thing before we go to some audience questions one thing I do want to clarify and clear up is it true the AVA has a bring your pet to work day not really every day at the AVA is bring your pet to work day um yeah look we we know we do we probably it's part of our culture that we have we have pets and we have office pets um and currently I think we've got we've got probably five dogs and a cat that circle through the office we we've got a policy so if you ever want to do this get in touch with me and we learned the hard way that having multiple animals in the office at the same time if they don't like each other they fight if they do like each other they urinate so it's not necessarily the best way to be we've had a lamb for a while that came into the office and wore a nappy that was fun we've had kittens we've had a rabbit we've had hamsters ferrets, pyramid crabs we've we've settled back down to dogs and cats it's probably not a bad thing but yeah we um we actually have a roster so there's probably a pet in our office every day but we keep it under control we have policies around behavior, soil training, kind of attack people. Mediation? Is there a mediation policy? It hasn't been used yet we don't have to put people in the middle um and we have a roster so you actually roster your pet in across the week so there's something that's on there every day but it's a really important part of who we are it's a really important part and it connects us to what our members do um so it's a it's a really special part of working for us and it's nice to get a pet to work. I'm interested we won't go into it how do you police the no fighting policy among the cats and dogs but um we we do have a few minutes I think we do for a few audience questions so Angie K has a microphone for one of our two special guests I think behind you. I'm Kristen from the Victorian Principles Association in Melbourne and I'm just interested to ask you how you go about formalizing your corporate partnerships is it a written contract or agreement that you as the association provide the corporate partner or particularly with the larger corporate partners do they give one to you that suits their regulations and controls to formalize and lock in that partnership I just want to know who who's the sort of key player in that written contract side of things thanks I'll give you the old-fashioned view Sam can give you the modern one um yeah we have written agreements um and we try wherever we can to be the provider of the agreement to the company I guess the thing that we're noticing more and more is that particularly US-based companies even where we're writing the agreement um are coming back with a whole lot of stuff around antitrust and um needing to overlay that over what we do but we I think we pretty much always we put in purchasing that a corporate a corporate supporter agreement and we write it and we put the terms up and we have a check by the illegal people yeah we'd often do the same sometimes some of the the bigger corporates want to provide the contract themselves um but unfortunately that like we're finding that there aren't that many new innovative ways of of creating these bigger partnerships you've kind of a lot of the time got to go through that initial grant process fill out the grant then go and meet with the organization then work out if it's going to work before you even get to the point of working out what that what that contract is so um yeah a lot of the time it is still the traditional way what it did for any other questions I'm going to have to switch mics and I'm going to have to also give a public apology to the gentleman who helped me with the audio at the back because he clipped it on and I said no it's fine I'll keep it on my lap and then it's fallen and it's broken so sorry about that um no other questions I think we'll head over to the next segment then so drum roll and yeah as good as we can do um Andrew so this is the most exciting part and no offense to anyone else but this is something that a lot of us look forward to every single fortnight so we sent Andrew on a mission and he goes out there looks around all over the world to try and find the most obscure association and then we spotlight them on some of the most amazing things that they're doing so you've had some great ones this year but I believe you've got a cracker for us today I do I do and thank you um you better not disappoint now I've hyped it up as you know I'm a bit of a sporting tragic um I could easily have seen myself being a professional athlete um just it's just a lack of talent that held me back um and if only this next association was actually around 20 years ago things could have worked out very different for me I bring to you the international dodgeball association this is a grassroots initiative that's all about advancing the sport of dodgeball globally I'm sure we've all seen the movie based in Vancouver IDA they even use the acronym themselves that's how cool this is they're run by passionate volunteers who simply loved the game of dodgeball and are passionate about sharing it with the world they have a vision this is this is so cool imagine a world where everyone young or old who loved the game of dodgeball can play it I mean that's a vision if ever I heard one um they also seek to promote the spirit of fun spirit and good sportsmanship um and they have this quote on their website spreading the dodgeball love such a worthy endeavor um and you know Sarah you guys at redback have these spacious offices I say get rid of the bill billiard table get rid of the table turns table you can go on the IDA website and they'll even tell you how to set up a dodgeball court in your in your workspace can you imagine me playing dodgeball I would travel with ping pong let alone the dodgeball but yes so a worthy endeavor you can find that great resource on their website um but good luck to the people at IDA and uh thank you for being featured on this segment so much passion and excitement thank you I love so um that brings us close to the end so if anyone does have any questions um please take a few moments to think about them first of all um at the end of every episode we hand it over just to put our two special guests on the spot so first of all Graham what gets you up raring to go within the sector what do you love about it every single day but it keeps changing every single day is is different um something you I'm still learning I kind of it's gonna sound a little bit odd and for those who know work with me the AVA you probably understand what I mean I still find things out about my organization I've been there nearly 10 years that I didn't know before um but ultimately yeah look I think we work I think we work in a in a profession in an industry changing and everything's going on and everything's different I think I'm really lucky I've got a team of people that um are all really passionate about what they're doing and where we're going uh I think we have to a degree I think the Craig Davis talk yesterday I think we have to agree been successful in in landing ourselves on a vision of where we're trying to get to that that people can buy into particularly um and one of the things we do with our board is probably realign our thinking from being all about and thinking about our stakeholders and the member being the all important stakeholder who are actually saying we sort of have our board we have our staff we have about 300 really engaged and committed members who are on committees and involved with us um and they're our core and I think that was a big thing for us to say actually staff for our key stakeholder that moves us closer to what you know really leading organizations being out there um so yeah look I think I love the veterinary profession and people we work with are just great they're really cool it's very hard to explain I think we're very lucky you know we work with really smart people who do really interesting things but none of them really did it to make money very altruistic profession um and they got in it because they love animals they love animal welfare they love animal science and so to be helping those people improve their profession to get to where they're going and no offense to anybody else but as opposed to people that are just in it for the money or just in it to grow the business or just in it for shareholder wealth I think that's probably what makes us a really really cool place to work as well as being able to get to the office um so yeah I really I can't imagine getting up and going I don't want to go to work this just doesn't happen it's always something waiting that's challenging interesting let's hope that continues if I do have any spare time then I can think about Jose and I guess Sam to put you on the spot as well same question what's mentioned you're a full-purpose organization what what is it that gets you out of bed every morning raring to go um look it's a lot easier for me in summer because I live down near the beach so I can go for a surf in the morning and that gets me out of bed I'm a bit soft and when winter comes around it's a bit harder for me um but look again it's a really good question because as you know as you heard from Graeme's response there are so many different things when you work in a sector that people have driven by purpose that motivate you to do what you do I think for me it's there's a range of different ways that I can come at this question I'm really excited by the potential of what Batir can become we've got so much opportunity because we are such a young organization we've got the ability to be flexible and adapt to to what's in front of us and what's coming and so we have a really clear vision and a mission and strategic plan of where we want to go but every day that could potentially shift based off different opportunities or things that come up which is which is fantastic but I think it's important especially in in leadership roles or times in which you're a little bit removed from the the people that you're there to to serve because I'm not out there every day delivering these programs working with young people to make sure that you you work out how you can keep that connection and so just yesterday actually we got an email from a university student that was in a program that we ran last Friday telling us essentially that they'd been dealing with pretty severe depression for a long time but hadn't felt like they had the the right to burden other people with that that reality and so had kept it in and hadn't spoken to anyone about it for years and just by hearing another young person open up and share their real-life experience and share their story that it empowered them to go and speak to their best friend and to go and work out how they can get professional help and so that one story motivates motivates me for the next month the next quarter the next year because that's one of the thousands of young people that we're running programs for just this year alone and I think as as the sort of CEO of the organization in different leadership positions whatever it may be you've got to have that really clear connection with what you're actually trying to achieve and that's that individual and that community-based change great answer thank you thanks to both of you that brings us to the end I like to thank everyone for joining us today it's been great to have you here for the wrap-up and it's also been great to listen to two very different organizations but also to hear how similar they are in very different ways as well so thank you Sam great to learn more about Batir and to have you with us today thank you very much and as always Graham you'll be around no doubt for the rest of the day so if anyone does have any other questions please feel free and thank you Andrew for yeah a little plug there yeah so if you'd like to hear me continue the talk for another 45 minutes who wouldn't come to the come to the aptify learning lab you can't have too much aptify learning lab at 10 30 thanks for having me thank you and thank you Andrew but before that we do have one more question one apologies one late question my question's around excellence and I think it's really interesting you've you've got a hundred year old association and one that's well five years do you try to define excellence is that important to you in terms of defining it and how do you measure it because I've to an extent Graham you answered it when you spoke about altruistic purpose but I'll be really interested in both your answers to that yeah look to I think for me and and I guess I'm thinking back to our sort of strategic plan and our values excellence doesn't really come into it you know I think everyone if you're trying to do something you're trying to do or the best that you can and so um striving for excellence or to be the best can potentially set you up to fail a lot of the time because because only one person can be the best and one person's excellence is very different to another person's and I and I think I don't think people are that and this is just my perspective I'm not sure if people are that motivated by that anymore especially in in our space I think they're motivated to do um to be as best as they can be to support the people that they're set up to support and and so it's working out what motivates and drives the ability to do that as opposed to saying we need to be excellent at everything um which is probably a bit of a different way to think about it but but how we've sort of developed our values and our strategic plan yeah that really does put us on the spot doesn't it look I think excellence has meaning for my members that it doesn't have for us because it's about clinical excellence say and their scientists that's about excellence in science it's about excellence in treatment and the word excellence does come up in what they do so and it's kind of black and white almost it's very cut and dried um I don't think excellence is a word that we throw around very much as an organization and I personally I would say I'm a little bit like Sam I think it's a little bit um if because I think your question was do you measure it and I don't know how you measure it how do you you can measure your achievement of your own goals my goal can be I want to be number one um and if you look at I talked a little bit our digital stuff as well which our whole organization is now wrapped up in this great disruptive expensive investment trying to be somewhere um and I'd like to think you know you could be able to compare us to a whole range of associations or other veterinary associations and we'll be the best now that's that's something that I can help people strive towards and identify say we're going to have excellent digital is almost almost a little bit difficult so um I don't we really don't really don't set out to measure it and I think it kind of I don't go out in the limb personally and say I think you know when it's there I actually think you know when when your people are it's such an intangible quality I think you know when when your people are doing excellent stuff it's up to you to say excellent work guys but you know you feel it um and I think I'm probably paraphrasing a little bit what Sam's saying trying to get that into some sort of KPI or some sort of tangible probably removes the ability to feel it and feed that back to people and because as leaders I think that's something that's got to come from you you know excellent work or that you know it's fantastic so again that's my that's my complex answer um but I think that that would be my take having been for not on the spot by putting it on the spot sometimes it just is a gut feel kind of thing when it comes to measurement no more questions that brings us to the end so I'm going to say goodbye once again thank you everyone for joining us thank you to the panel and thank you Andrew I'll give you a thank you Sarah um thanks once again for everyone who's joined us for season two of six degrees of association we'll be back next year we haven't discussed it but let's just say that we will um and remember that too much conversation always kills the chats bye for now